Thursday, May 16, 2013

Celebrity Fashion and Brand Impact

How often do you buy the national newspapers and open it up to the middle pages to find photo's of personalities from TV, film and music posing for promo art or in compromising positions? VERY often, but what emphasis is placed on how they dress?

Celebrities can be partly defined by what they wear and not just by how they act on camera. But when celebrities are caught on camera behaving badly, what impact does this have on the label behind the nice designer clothes they are wearing?

Generally the case is "all publicity is good publicity" and because of this designer clothing labels will benefit from the misbehavings of those celebrities. A good example being Pete Docherty (ex Libertines). Docherty has been photographed on occasions wearing Gio-Goi clothing, a label he seems to love. This has hugely increased the reach of Gio Goi as a label and brought it to the "indie" crowd, where anybody who plays guitar owns a White Label tee.

One could argue that if a celebrity is spotted wearing your gear; you (as a brand) have made it. But what if a certain celebrity fuels an unsavory subculture that is generally considered bad, or wrong? A good example being bands like Oasis, who wore the expensive stuff and promoted "lad culture". Many clubs and bars disallow entry to people wearing brands like Henry Lloyd, simply due to the publicity caused by famous people that wore that clothing brand and acted like hooligans, for lack of a better term.

Ultimately I would consider celebrityfashion a positive however, with a certain MTV presenter wearing clothing by a relatively underground brand here in the UK; Drunknmunky. It gives great exposure and celebrities often give their opinions on music, film, politics and the like, so why should they not express themselves visually also?

Huge online clothing store ASOS prides itself on bringing celebrityfashion to the man (and woman) on the street, so it's clear that there is a massive market for this kind of clothing. And it makes sense - who wouldn't want to dress like their favourite artists and actors?